I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, write me on Facebook or just email at paultassi(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm also almost finished with my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy.

Translating Gaming Journalism Buzzwords

For an industry that supposedly wants to work together to continue to make gaming a widely accepted pastime around the world, we often seem to hate each other quite a bit. The three pillars of video games, those who make the games, those who report on the games and those who play the games, often seem to love going to war with each other.

This can produce healthy debate, or it can devolve into a flame-fest that benefits no one. We would be wise to take time for a little bit of introspection, and as I’m part of the “journalist” camp, I recognize that we can do a lot of things wrong.

One thing that seems to grate on people is the use of certain buzzwords when it comes to games reporting or reviews. Words that either are overused, used wrongly, or really, mean nothing at all. Below I took some words that readers suggested to me as “annoying,” and tried to translate them into what they really mean when they’re used.

This isn’t to say I’m above all this. I guarantee I’ve used most of these terms at least once, if not many times. These days I’m trying to either use them correctly or not at all, but I’m not perfect, and neither are my peers. Let’s begin:

Entitled - “Gamers whining about a game they didn’t like.” Perhaps “whining” should be on this list too. The idea that gamers are not allowed to think a game they were hotly anticipating does not live up to expectations baffles me. When you pay for a game, you are entitled to both A) hopefully a good game and B) your opinion either way.

Outrage – “What results from entitled players.” There is legitimate “outrage” that happens when players do in fact act outrageously by harassing game devs or journalists, but it’s too often applied to those who are merely majorly miffed about something and happen to express it in a public forum. This one word can turn a little story into a big story.

Cinematic Experience – “I’m playing a movie.” This was good when it was actually describing the first sorts of games to do this like Uncharted, but games are so graphically intensive now that it’s being applied to practically any current gen title with a good single player campaign. Skyrim is not “cinematic” just because it looks good.

Graphically Intensive – “It has good graphics.” Whoops. Walked into that one. This makes sense when being used to describe a game which might cripple your PC on high settings, but it’s being misused to describe any game that looks remotely decent.

Emotionally Engaging – “I didn’t hate the characters.”Video games are coming a long way in terms of story, but this term can be used rather loosely for any moment when you felt even the tiniest twinge of emotion in a game.

Thirty seconds of emotion in a 10 hour game doesn't count

Streamlined – “It looks better than it used to.” It might be a fun word, but you can apply it to really anything in a game where it seems to make sense , but means nothing. “The level design was streamlined.” “The user interface was streamlined.” “Master Chief’s jock was streamlined.”

Microtransactions – “Paying extra money for extra crap in a game.” The word makes it sounds all professional-like, but really, it’s managing to convince people that it’s more fun to pay for in-game items than to work for them. It’s a valuable skill, but adding nothing to gaming, in my opinion at least.

Spiritual Successor -“A game that is vaguely like a past game.” Example: Assassin’s Creed is a spiritual successor to Prince of Persia because Ubisoft likes jumping and climbing.

Social Gaming - “Anti-social gaming.” Yes, it means the opposite because it’s usually referring to games that force unwanted interactions from players to others, like recruiting Farmville neighbors or other such nonsense.

Acclaimed – “Famous.” If you’re describing someone as “acclaimed,” chances are people will already know who they are and it’s an empty word (The acclaimed Hideo Kojima!). If they don’t know who you’re talking about, you’re still not explaining why they’re acclaimed.

Also, depending on who it's applied to, it can lose its meaning.

Genre Defining – “The best (insert game type) I’ve played in six months.” This is almost always used in hyperbole, and almost always will spark a fight, hence why it’s employed.

Visceral – “It makes you kill things graphically.” It’s meant to be a description of emotion, but it’s almost never used that way. Since it sort of looks like “violent,” it’s often used interchangeably.

Reports Say- “Rumors say.” We just call them “reports” because it sounds more official when it in fact it is nothing of the sort. “Reports” can be someone talking directly to Miyomoto, or something someone heard from a forum poster on NeoGAF. Until you know one way or the other, it’s probably not worth talking about.

Epic – “I can’t think of a more creative adjective.” The internet ruined this word completely, rendering it all but unusable. Unless you’re talking about Epic Games I suppose.

Paid Off – “I didn’t agree with this review and can’t coherently express that.” Yeah that’s right, you readers aren’t spared here either. This seems to be used any time a review goes up that scores a game high. If readers disagree, the reviewer surely must have been bought off, right? But if they score a game you like too low, they’re being paid by the competition, of course.

Any more to add? If they’re good I’ll keep going. These are all in good fun, keep in mind. No need to get all graphically intensive about them.

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Technically, “streamlined” still means “Features Removed” or “Dumbed down” to many veteran gamers/journos.

The new XCom game and its reviews are great examples of the use and misuse of this term. While many were just plain grateful to see the brand revived as a not-fps, and while objectively speaking the game itself was actually awesome when compared to its modern-day peers, a definitive comparative list of “What does the old one do better” and “what does the new one do better” would still leave any person with their critical-thinking facilities intact wondering why the new version needs to exist at all.

I really like the article Paul. I’d love to see you do more! May I suggest a few? “Immersive”, “Game of the Year (Ever notice how many of those there are each year?)”, “A small number of fans/A niche group (In reference to outrage/entitled)”, “Niche market (If reference to anything not an FPS)”, “Revolutionary”.

But honestly, I’m not so sure about the last one in your article. We have ample evidence at this point. From the Gamespot incident, to IGN’s rampant defense of the company that hired their employees, to a giveaway to advertise for the PR, to the free gifts mailed at review time, to the free trips and lavish entertainment.

There’s ample evidence of collusion, and virtually no evidence it doesn’t exist except that very same group of people posting “We’re not paid off, really!”. At this point, what we really need is another Government Payola investigation, because otherwise there’s no reason to believe they aren’t paid off.

I understand that the buzzwords pertaining to reviews can sometimes be hard to avoid. 99% of reviews come out before a game’s launch and in trying to avoid spoilers it can be easy to fall back on tired cliches and hyperbole. Personally, I’d love it if sites would consider writing supplemental follow ups to their reviews, spoiler-full, perhaps a month or so after a game’s release and really express the experiential impact of specific narrative high and low points.

Your article also reminded me of this one:

http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2012/10/words.html

It talks about how gaming’s level of creativity, especially in the indie space, has exceeded gamers’ ability to interpret it.

“streamlined” = “we cut all the interesting parts of the game” “we want to appeal to a broader audience” = “it’ll be nothing like the prequels and it’ll suck, alienating most of our audience in hope for inexplicable profits” “we want to appeal to the Call of Duty audience” = “we don’t know what we are doing and it’ll suck” “WoW killer” = “newest MMO in hype mode” “make the game more social” = “we heard Facebook/Twitter/etc. are popular and are going to implement it in our game for inexplicable reasons, we also hope you’ll do our marketing for us using those tools”

Paid reviews are pretty common. When you see a game advertised on a site, you can’t trust that site’s review. You also can’t trust a review that has blatant factual inaccuracies, attacks fanbases or has no critical analysis. The only place I actually trust for reviews is you guys at forbes is because you guys write well, admit to fuck ups and you aren’t paid off as video game advertisement doesn’t bring in the revenue to your company and thus you have no financial incentive to outright lie to people.

“Paid Off – “I didn’t agree with this review and can’t coherently express that.” Yeah that’s right, you readers aren’t spared here either. This seems to be used any time a review goes up that scores a game high. If readers disagree, the reviewer surely must have been bought off, right? But if they score a game you like too low, they’re being paid by the competition, of course.”

You seem to have quality control and passive aggressive issues here, this is again something that would belong on IGN or some other trash site, paid off refers not to “my game got a low score so I’m mad!” or “this game I don’t like got a high one so I’m mad!” like some irrational and flippant defense of Yahtzee’s sliding quality over the years to the tune of “hurrdurr he mocked a game you like you mad you mad you mad”, it is a bad game getting universally good scores.

Plain and simple, it is nothing more and nothing less, I’m starting to question your place here, Paul.